Comments on: HOWTO make health-care cheaper by spending more on patients who need ithttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html
Brain candy for Happy MutantsMon, 30 Mar 2015 20:24:05 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010697
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010697Newsflash: NHS-style systems are dramatically cheaper! It’s a good thing we finally have some domestic data to back this up instead of relying on the experience of every other industrialised country in the world.
]]>By: awjtawjthttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010713
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010713The big (nay, HUGE) confounder in this system are the insurance companies. They use these outlier events to simultaneously gouge the end-user (the company contracting the health plan, and therefore the workers paying their share) and to pump up their negotiations with the hospitals who are the payors. Insurance companies and hospitals/clinics are in an annual arms race to raise prices for procedures in a pell-mell, totally illogical, disproportionate manner. It might seem logical in a microsystem, but with all insurance companies and all hospitals in the country engaging this battle annually, the entire collective is haphazard.

Here is what happens. Hospitals want to get paid, but they can only recoup a fraction of the actual cost, so they look to other high-margin procedures to offset their losses. Simultaneously, insurance companies (who know the disease profiles of their user-base) are trying to reduce the amount they pay for some procedures while “letting go” of some price-tamping on other procedures which they know will be less lucrative in the near future. The net result of this wrestling match is exponential price inflation.

Also, the system of DRG codes allows both entities to fractionate all medical procedures into increasingly illogical components. This is so that each component has its own profit margin. Put those together for whatever could happen to a patient, and you arrive at the total cost of care. So in some regions, a knee surgery will be $10,000 total, and in other places the same surgery with the exact same components will be $25,000, and broken down into different components that have different price tags.

Imagine if in Seattle a motherboard cost you $250 but in Miami, the same motherboard cost you $750 and there was no newegg or tigerdirect. In Seattle, the manufacturers were able to price the components lower due to a bulk purchase of some parts and only relatively few expensive parts they had to import for Uzbekistan. Whereas in Miami, all the distributors colluded and knew they could artificially keep capacitors at an unreasonably high cost, which meant a $750 motherboard to the end-user at every store in town.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but in its essential form, THAT’S what’s happening with health care costs in the U.S.

Without a ref, the biggest guy on the field makes up the rules as he goes.

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010719
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010719I always get a bit of a chuckle when this sort of discussion about health care comes up. It’s always a rehash of arguments that I’ve seen elsewhere in my career, albeit hidden by an extra layer of confusion confusion caused by moral ambiguity.

]]>By: ubarchhttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010983
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010983Oh, come on. What I’m saying isn’t preposterous, and it’s just silly to think that even if the program is viable on a large scale, that its current incarnation is good enough for large-scale deployment. “Scaling” doesn’t mean you clone the founders and get N experiences that are exactly like this article– It means you try to put together a system that can systematically produce teams that get as close as possible to the pilot experience.

The author of the article even points out that the viability of a system like this is uncertain because it hasn’t been tested in a large population yet.

I think you (and definitely lava) are confusing my skepticism with being outright against the approach. I had hoped to avoid that confusion by explicitly stating that I wasn’t. So, let us not be in such violent agreement. I hope they go on testing the approach, and I’m holding back my excitement for when it’s shown to work on a larger population.

]]>By: lavahttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010810
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010810So the skeptics say that this won’t work because well people will spoof being chronically ill to get superior healthcare.

I think I have to weigh in with the conclusion that this is as preposterous as it sounds.

]]>By: phisrowhttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010560
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010560There is a certain irony to the fact that the work these guys are doing shares about 95% of its DNA with that of a well-baked “scientific eugenics” scheme… They’d probably be really unhappy to see their work take off in that context.
]]>By: Baldheadhttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010818
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010818preventative medecine always works better than emergency surgery. This is in fact why publicly paid health care tends to cost less than the for- profit model the US uses, while still providing better care. If people know they can just go to the doctor and not have to pay anything for it they just go, simple. I expect this model can be used to help improve health care services wherever (a good example is for any treatments that may require waiting lists, need could be better determined).
]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010564
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010564Any kind of intelligent attempt an the part of the government to allocate care will be labeled a “death panel” by the right. (forget the capitalist insurance companies have real death panels)
]]>By: jacobianhttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010565
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010565Yes, taking a scientific approach to studying how to maximise our ability to help people is just like being a Nazi. Now maybe you can get on to discussing the actual content without bandying around meaningless insults by way of association fallacies.
]]>By: Tofagerlhttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010569
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010569Wow, not many articles makes you want to become a statistician to help people…

I wonder if you could make a huge difference in many other professions where philantropy is not usually practiced. Like a plumber or a bus driver… You just needed to find an way to help people, and you could turn your life into a force for good without even switching jobs!

]]>By: collapsingwaveshttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010573
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010573Preventing extremely high health care costs and improving the quality of the health/lives of people at this risk level? Yes, win win. Thanks for posting this, Cory. Also, nice reply jacobian.
]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010574
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010574I fear that, no matter how successful and widespread this may become, any savings realized will simply translate to higher profit margins for insurance companies.
]]>By: ubarchhttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010575
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010575I’m a little bit sceptic about whether this approach would scale. In other words, it may only be working now because the pilot program being run is small, and people haven’t understood the cost/benefit landscape for long enough to incorporate it into their actions.

What if you rolled out this plan nationally, and a significant percentage of people who would not have otherwise been “super utilizers” began acting like that group so that they could get the disproportionately good healthcare?

There’s a rule of thumb in agent-based modeling: “Bigger is Different”. It’s a rule meant to remind you how all sorts of social systems will change their behavior as they scale. I think this experiment is encouraging, but we can’t say it’s the answer based on a small pilot.

Any kind of intelligent attempt an the part of the government to allocate care will be labeled a “death panel” by the right.

To be more precise:

It’ll be labeled “death panel” by the corporatists in the American “health” and insurance industry. Then they’ll manufacture consent through their media outlets and it’ll be parroted by the mindless drones of the right.

]]>By: t3knomanserhttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010590
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010590The power of quarter-driven business: it’s vastly easier to justify spending $100,000 a quarter forever, than to spend $400,000 all at once, despite the fact that the latter option costs less over time, it costs more RIGHT NOW, and that’s bad.

As for scaling problems- that really depends on the frequency of these “super-users” and how they’re distributed geographically.

]]>By: phisrowhttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010593
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010593Did you fail reading comprehension? I specifically noted that they would be unhappy if their work were to be thus used. That’s approximately the opposite of attempting an association fallacy.

I was, in total seriousness, noting the irony in the fact that, whether your motives are humanitarian or malevolent, the algorithmic exercise is one of optimizing the overall outcome by locating and addressing the outliers in the larger group.

This is no more “insult by association” than is, say, noting structural homologies between sharks and dolphins, or the ritual similarities between two disparate religious groups.

]]>By: akwhitacrehttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010597
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010597Ubarch, you’re right that any good health care delivery/insurance model has to take self-interest into account (it’s a reason Massachusetts and, soon, the U.S. have a mandate to buy health insurance, because healthy people often choose to forgo insurance, despite the aggregate social cost of the 1-in-a-100 that get hurt and can’t pay).

But in the case of super-utilizers, it’s tough to imagine (meaning, I could be wrong) that someone who spends 30 days a year in the hospital via emergency room visits wouldn’t want not to. Option 1 is bankrupting yourself (and your community), likely remaining in pain or discomfort, and sacrificing a good amount of dignity because you’re not in control of your life. Option 2 is paying less (and costing your community less), being in less pain and discomfort, and sacrificing less dignity by being visited by a dedicated doctor instead of showing up at the emergency room.

Most types of health care have an automatic limiting mechanism that throws a spanner in the econ101 “cost->0 demand->infinity” rule: They are better than what they are intended to cure; but they suck compared to just being healthy. All are time-consuming, many are painful or have unpleasant side-effects. Not a few are fairly risky.

Aside from your hypochondriacs, MÃ¼nchausen cases, or medical drug addicts(all three of which are in fact sick, just not in the way they immediately present themselves to be) or severely isolated elderly or mental health cases(who, again, could quite probably use some work) there just isn’t much incentive for healthy people to feign illness(aside from the occasional upgrading of a cold when calling in to work…). “Hey, if I feign serious illness and go to the ER N times, I get to skip the line on my N+1th instance! Hooray!”

Plus, if this scheme is successful in keeping hardcore sickies from bouncing in and out of the ER, and either reduces their service requirements by making them healthier, or at least makes them more predictable by scheduling some of them, presumably ER waits and scheduling for low-frequency users will become incrementally less unpleasant…

]]>By: Brillobreakshttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010604
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010604The “super utilizers” are people doing really harmful things to themselves, or they’re having harmful things happen to them for reasons mostly out of their control. Do you really think otherwise healthy, safe, and sane people will start harming themselves in order to get this “disproportionately good healthcare”? Multiple chronic illnesses and frequent emergency room visits in order to get a nurse to call and remind you to take your pills?

Also, it’s not really an experiment, is it? You spend money taking care of everyone, especially the small number of really sick people, and it keeps them from getting as sick or having as many emergencies. Which brings the costs down for everyone. Pretty much everyone outside the US runs their system this way already.

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1012149
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1012149It doesn’t work like that. The highest cost patients are the ones who are admitted to the intensive care unit, who require dialysis, who have long stays on the ward, precisely because chronic problems that could’ve been managed in the community, weren’t.

A good rule of thumb is that an admission to the hospital (at least where I work in Canada) costs the system $1000 if the patient goes to a bed on the ward. If they go to the ICU, it’s $10000 a day.

]]>By: ubarchhttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010622
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010622That (and phisrow’s) points are good ones… It may not be worth it to just decide to act like you need serious medical care as a precautionary measure. However, I can keep playing devil’s advocate. What if it’s worth it to your doctor to have as many “super utilizers” as possible under their care? Less than honest healthcare providers are incentivized to find as many of these extremely valuable individuals as they can through questionable medical decision making, and honest (but profit-driven) institutions may even base their businesses around it. What happens if you can make more money as a healthcare provider caring for three super-utilizers than you can caring for a hundred normal people?

It’s easy to be sceptical like this in the face of what must be really hard work to solve a very hard problem. I’m not saying the work is invalid, or misguided, or not worth doing. My only point is that what these people have shown is promising but is still some very difficult milestones away from being a real candidate for an answer. I think this is especially true since this particular system involves metering out gigantic rewards to a select group of people– Something about that makes me think that it will somehow succumb to being a huge target for corruption or some other systemic failure mode.

]]>By: awjtawjthttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010881
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010881Until the health insurance companies have their balls chopped off, our hands are all tied. No reform is possible. They are the huge fly with one spec of ointment on its right wing. With them in the picture, no further discussion about “what should we do?” can rationally take place.
]]>By: Ernunnoshttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010627
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010627Many social problems demonstrate this kind of outlier effect. Education, crime, homelessness, police abuse, traffic accidents. We keep designing policies to address the majority of low-risk cases, and ignore the outliers who need a lot of help.
]]>By: Tsu D. Nimhttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010638
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010638From each according to ability, to each according to need. It’s not just kind. It’s efficient.
]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010896
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010896This reminds me of the article in the NYer a while back about “Million Dollar Murray”. http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_13_a_murray.html

They talk about how the common misconception that costs follow a bell curve is not actually reality, they look at costs in common problems like homelessness, police brutality, and health care costs, and in all they notice that costs are concentrated around a few cases “it wouldn’t look like a bell curve. It would look more like a hockey stick. It would follow what statisticians call a “power law” distributionâ€”where all the activity is not in the middle but at one extreme.” They notice that it’s a few chronically ill patients that are costing cities millions of dollars, a few “rogue” police officers that are racking up the vast majority of the complaints, and a few chronically homeless (usually sick and also addicted) that are costing cities the most in medical bills, police enforcement & other services. There’s a solution to these problems that work, but it’s also sad to note (as the doctors in the above article seem to be finding out) that these solutions are also usually politically unpopular. Anyway, it’s a long article, but I highly recommend reading it.

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2011/01/29/howto-make-health-ca.html#comment-1010643
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1010643Ummm… the world, including the US, had a robust eugenics movement long before Nazis. If anything, their association only served to hasten the decline of the movement at that time.

I think it’s about time communities have 24/7 medical clinics. Ideally they would partner with and be adjacent to the ER. They could triage for each other (maybe have one intake?) so the really sick people receive the emergency care they need while the flu case and withdrawing drug addicts can get the care they need. Just because you feel sick doesn’t mean you are dying.

Here’s another rant. Our small town paper reports a police and fire log. This week (like most) all of fire calls were medical aid. Why do we need to haul out that kind of highly trained and specialized professional every time an elderly person is scared about their loss of mobility (yes I’m exaggerating here)? Mis-applying your life saving tools really drains your community.